The High Court has dismissed a judicial review challenge by a Cameroonian national to a tribunal decision refusing him permission to reapply for international protection. Mr Justice Richard Humphreys delivered the judgment on 22 March 2019.
The applicant sought an order quashing the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s decision of 23 April 2018. The tribunal had rejected his appeal against the International Protection Office’s refusal to let him re-enter the protection process under section 22 of the International Protection Act 2015.
The application relied on claimed risks if the applicant returned to Cameroon, including imprisonment and harsh prison conditions. The claims included an alleged offence relating to leaving Cameroon without permission and a possible risk as a failed asylum seeker. The court noted that the claim about prison conditions depended on the applicant first establishing that he faced imprisonment.
The judge set out three separate requirements for re-entry: new elements or findings must have arisen or been presented since the earlier application; they must make it significantly more likely that the applicant would qualify for protection; and the applicant must, through no fault of his own, have been unable to present them earlier.
The tribunal had rejected all three requirements. The judge found the third decisive: the applicant had not made a case that he was unable to raise the claimed risks during his earlier subsidiary-protection application. The relevant Cameroonian law had existed since 1990, while the applicant relied in part on country information from 2015. The court said the later information did not establish that the underlying issue had been unavailable earlier.
The judge also addressed mootness. The deportation order had been revoked in July 2018, following the acceptance of a separate application for permission to remain as the parent of an Irish citizen child. The judge said a claim based on fear of forced return was moot in the circumstances as they stood, absent a fundamental change. A claim based on the applicant being at risk in Cameroon even if travelling there voluntarily was not moot, but the judge found he had not established the evidential basis that he had emigrated illegally.
Because the applicant had not overcome the requirement that the claimed points could not have been raised earlier, the judge considered challenges to the tribunal’s treatment of the other requirements academic. He dismissed the proceedings. The judgment did not grant the requested order quashing the tribunal’s decision.